Over the last 20 years, small ships have taken me all over the world: Patagonia, the Galapagos, the Sea of Cortez, northern Burma, the Nile, India, Indonesia, the Arctic and most corners of the Mediterranean. There’s no better way to travel, which is why I have created this site – to fly the flag for smaller ships.

But what, you may ask, counts as a small ship? I don’t believe that there’s a magic number. Of course, there are the obvious small ships – tiny expedition vessels like Silversea’s Silver Explorer, or Celebrity Xpedition in the Galapagos, or the petite fleet of Variety Cruises. I’d count Noble Caledonia’s ships as small – Island Sky, Caledonian Sky and Hebridean Sky, carrying 118 passengers each, or the elegant sailing fleet of Star Clippers. River cruisers are by nature small, so this blog will cover plenty of those. Some ships are so tiny that some would barely count them as a cruise but if the experience resembles that of a fantastic sea or river voyage, we’ll include them anyway, from Turkish gulets to luxurious houseboats.

As far as bigger ships go, we’ll review anything that has a small-ship feel, by which I mean freedom of where and when you eat, no queuing for anything, no pushy selling of extras and no gimmicks. A ship carrying 500 people can feel intimate if it gets the formula right.

Although I have a particular passion for small ships, I consider myself (modestly) to be an expert in all kinds of cruising. I’m cruise editor for The Sunday Times and a regular reviewer for Cruise Critic, the blogs of Six Star Cruises and RiverVoyages.com and a contributor to magazines worldwide from Woman & Home to Sunday Times Travel and Porthole. New reviews are being added to this site all the time, so please keep coming back!